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WWhen Boris Johnson entered the scrum at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham two years ago, he received a welcome more fitting for a rock star than a backbencher.
Some breathless delegates had waited four hours to be part of the 1,500-strong audience for their speech at a fringe event. They applauded their hero loudly, as she condemned Theresa May’s Brexit deal as an “outrage” that would catch the UK “in the Brussels tractor beam.”
This year, there will be no live audience at the conference; And the hype that surrounded Johnson when he was the “prince from across the water” seems like a distant memory.
A poll of grassroots members conducted by the ConHome website on the eve of the conference found that only 28% thought Johnson was dealing well with the coronavirus pandemic; 63% said they were mishandling it.
As the government staggers from one U-turn to another, antagonizing a growing number of Tory MPs, those who sympathize with Johnson blame his powerful advisers, including Dominic Cummings, for restraining the “Boris” they knew and loved.
“People feel that Boris is not the Boris he was. Something has happened to him, ”said a former supporter.
Steve Baker, the ringleader of this week’s 80-person secondary rebellion over coronavirus restrictions, compared Johnson to King Théoden of Tolkein, “under the spell” of his advisers.
“When Theoden wakes up, and I mean Boris, everything will be fine,” Baker said.
At a recent meeting with the executive of the Conservative Deputies Committee in 1922, to feed back to the prime minister the mood of the restless parliamentary party, members were surprised when Johnson arrived with a “praetorian guard” of seven aides.
“It was crazy. One of the advisers comes over and gives him a piece of paper to read. It was suffocating. He’s out of the hospital, but special advisers are keeping him in intensive care. “
For the veteran Conservative MPs who are always skeptical about Johnson’s suitability for the prime ministerial job, there is no surprise at the crooked communications and the feeling that he is unaware of the details of the policies.
When asked if the shine is due to Johnson’s prime ministerial position, a former cabinet minister replied gruffly: “If you drop something that is completely ornamental into a corrosive acid bath, it tends to lose its appeal.”
At home, conservative members’ skepticism of Johnson comes despite the fact that most will not have been to the extreme of the latest coronavirus restrictions, which have created a complex mosaic of restrictions imposed across much of the Northeast and northwest. England.
However, gaffes and mistakes still irritate him.
A Conservative MP in a constituency in southern England said its local members were often small business owners or professionals, who were baffled by what they saw as unprofessional antics in Downing Street. “It’s like ‘continuing the coronavirus,’ with Boris as Sid James and Matt Hancock as Kenneth Williams,” he said.
For the Red Wall MPs and their local associations, Johnson remains the leader who led them to victory last December, in seats they hardly dared hope they could win. Many are still inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt … for the moment, at least.
Aidan Ruff, a 31-year member of the party, is president of the Northumberland Conservatives Association, which covers Hexham, Wansbeck, Berwick and Blyth Valley. He said conservative members in the area had been broadly understanding.
“I think most people think they are doing the best with a bad job. That is the impression I have. The only complaint I’ve heard is people saying, ‘Can’t we do more testing?’ Because that’s obviously the key.
“The secondary is probably messaging … how the blocking rules are enforced. It’s very simple, just stay away from people if you are unwell. It really doesn’t have to be much more complicated than that. “
When asked about Johnson’s poor polls among party members, Ruff said: “This is not Boris’s natural playing field, so I think he’s always going to have a hard time with this … Fighting a pandemic is something very technical, it is not his strong suit. “
He added: “The pressure he must be under at the moment, how he can keep a smile on his face, I have no idea. Most people would run in circles waving their arms and screaming. “
Julian Arnold, president of the Blackburn Conservative Association, which has also suffered from localized restrictions, also sympathized with Johnson.
“You wouldn’t have your job for all the tea in China,” Arnold said. “We made him our leader, the country elected him as leader but there are idiosyncrasies with Boris, do you know what I mean? I get from the members, ‘Well that’s Boris, right?’ “
Most MPs representing the red wall seats seem equally inclined to give Johnson the benefit of the doubt, but some report that their constituents are upset against the latest coronavirus restrictions.
“Much of that goodwill is still there,” said a deputy elected in 2019.
But they also highlighted concerns among conservative colleagues, especially about the 10pm curfew for hospitality companies, which they described as a “kick in the stomach for our local service sector.”
“This measure, in particular, is causing us real concerns at the local level. As a fellow Tory MP on a red wall seat told me: ‘We’ve gone from eating out to helping, drinking and getting angry,’ the MP said.
“It is a real problem, real now. It does not appear to be being applied clearly and the lack of scientific evidence in this regard is also a major concern. ”
But Sajjad Karim, who served as Conservative MEP for the Northwest for 15 years until 2019, predicted that concerns about jobs and the economy could lead the notoriously ruthless Conservative party to turn against the prime minister.
When asked about the Conservatives’ support in the red wall seats, Karim said: “Well, I think those MPs will be more and more concerned next year because many of them have been elected for the first time only, personally. . And many of those seats have been won after many, many, many years, if not for the first time, and their majorities are not large. “
If the prime minister appears to be a drag on their electoral prospects, he added, “they will move to eliminate Boris Johnson to try to protect their own position.”
Approval ratings can go up or down, and much will depend on the economic consequences of the pandemic and Brexit.
A flurry of optimistic announcements is planned at the conference in an attempt to return to the upbeat mood of last December’s crushing election, and the “leveling off” agenda that was supposed to define Johnson’s prime ministerial position.
If a vaccine emerges to allow something akin to normal life to return, and a Brexit deal is reached with the EU to limit the immediate consequences of the end of the transition period in January, even Johnson’s critics believe it could restore much of it. of his lost popularity with the public.
But it’s hard to imagine him ever being the conference pin-up he was two years ago.
